Just before the holidays last year, the aspirations of thousands
of Cleveland schoolchildren were put on hold when federal judge
Solomon Oliver ruled that a Cleveland school choice program was
a violation of the separation of church and state and was therefore
unconstitutional.

That's a shame because Cleveland's four-year-old voucher program
gives needy families with children in kindergarten through sixth
grade up to $2,500 in tuition vouchers.

At issue is that most of the 3,543 children enrolled in the
Cleveland program are in religious schools. Oliver said that because
nearly all the 56 participating schools were religion-based, the
program had "the effect of advancing religion through government-supported
religious indoctrination." While Oliver ordered the program
shut down, he agreed to let it continue until an appeal could
be heard. School choice supporters said they would appeal the
decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

And they should, as Oliver's decision raised more questions
than it answered.

One question: If the Cleveland school choice program violates
the separation of church and state, what would Oliver say about
similar programs of long standing such as the G.I. Bill and federal
Pell Grants that people use to attend the public or private universities
of their choice? Oliver's contradictory decision highlights the
complexities of school choice programs, where families are given
vouchers for state funds to spend at a school of their choice.

First proposed by economist Milton Friedman after the United
States Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in 1954 in Brown
v. the Board of Education, "school choice" was used
by white parents to circumvent Brown and send their children to
all-white private schools. That practice was ruled unconstitutional
in the late 1950s, but the concept of school choice would forever
change education. And it did in 1989, when African-American activists,
parents and politicians pushed forward a voucher plan of their
own in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

It remains the only publicly-financed voucher program in the
nation and has withstood an onslaught of legal challenges from
the American Civil Liberties Union, teachers unions, People for
the American Way and the NAACP. The Cleveland program was modeled
after Milwaukee's. Florida is also embarking on a statewide school
choice program.

Teachers unions, civil libertarians and many, if not most,
liberals see school choice as a diabolical plot to destroy the
public school system. Political conservatives, on the other hand,
see it as a way to improve public schools through competition.

The battle for school choice points up the failure of the public
school system in urban America. Parents in these school systems
are tired of the vast array of excuses used to justify school
failures - such as the broken home theory, racism or social-economic
status. These parents don't want to hear excuses and they want
to see results. School choice gives them an option.

A recent Gallup poll showed that people surveyed favored school
choice 51 to 47 percent. Among African-Americans, support for
school choice is off the charts, in spite of opposition from most
black leaders (many of them, coincidentally, send their own children
to private schools) and the NAACP. A 1999 poll by the Joint Center
for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington D.C. think tank,
found that 60% of blacks in total favored school vouchers, while
70 percent of young blacks between the ages of 26 and 35 favor
vouchers.

Blacks supporting school choice see it as a way to save a generation
of black students now attending public schools with 30 to 40 percent
dropout rates and collective grade point averages below 2.0. The
push for school choice among blacks can be seen in the new book
Not Yet Free at Last by Mikel Holt, the editor of the black weekly
Milwaukee Community Journal newspaper.

Holt compares the battle for school choice in Milwaukee and
the nation with the battle to desegregate schools in the 1950s.
But while the battle to desegregate the schools was fought against
Southern segregationists, Holt writes that the battle for choice
will be fought against liberal special interest groups like the
People for the American Way and teachers unions. "While condemning
school choice, the left offers no real solutions for the abysmal
failure of the public school system and the harm it has caused
millions of minority and poor children," writes Holt. He
has a point.

While it isn't perfect, school choice is the only certain solution
that will break up the educational status quo and ensure greater
educational opportunities are available for the people who need
them most. If this happens, then maybe the public schools that
aren't working will be able to reform themselves for all.

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(Lee Hubbard, an associate of Project 21, is a journalist who
writes on urban and national affairs. He can be reached at [email protected].)

Note: New Visions Commentaries reflect the views
of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21.